A Health and Fitness Blog

“The bottom line is that these (soy foods) are not nutrients. They are drugs.” — Dr. Lon R. White

Despite this scary truth, many people have come to believe that soy is healthy; even a miracle food. We can thank a massive marketing campaign by the soy industry for this false belief.

As Lierre Keith points out in The Vegetarian Myth, “This is what you are eating when you eat soy: an industrial waste product. Soy as it grows in the field is not actually a low-fat paragon. It’s about 30 percent fat. Once upon a time it was grown for its oil–not because people ate it, but because it was used for paint and glue. In 1913, the USDA listed soy as an industrial material, not as a food.”

Call me crazy, but I have no desire to consume anything that was once listed as an industrial material and was used for paint and glue.

Here is a list of the dangers of soy, as summarized by the Weston A. Price Foundation (I have inserted my own comments in parentheses):

High levels of phytic acid (phytates are antinutrients that bind with minerals in your digestive track) in soy reduce assimilation of calcium, magnesium, copper, iron and zinc. Phytic acid in soy is not neutralized by ordinary preparation methods such as soaking, sprouting and long, slow cooking. High phytate diets have caused growth problems in children.

Trypsin inhibitors (Trypsin is an important digestive enzyme produced by the pancreas) in soy interfere with protein digestion and may cause pancreatic disorders. In test animals soy containing trypsin inhibitors caused stunted growth.

Soy phytoestrogens (phytoestrogens are an estrogen-like compound produced by over 300 plants, with soy being the only one that humans eat) disrupt endocrine function and have the potential to cause infertility and to promote breast cancer in adult women.

Soy phytoestrogens are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease.

Vitamin B12 analogs in soy are not absorbed and actually increase the body’s requirement for B12.

Soy foods increase the body’s requirement for vitamin D.

Fragile proteins are denatured (Denature: To cause the tertiary structure of a protein to unfold, as with heat, alkali, or acid, so that some of its original properties, especially its biological activity, are diminished or eliminated) during high temperature processing to make soy protein isolate and textured vegetable protein.

Processing of soy protein results in the formation of toxic lysinoalanine (lysinoalanine is an unusual amino acid) and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines (nitrosamines are a chemical compound).

Free glutamic acid or MSG, a potent neurotoxin, is formed during soy food processing and additional amounts are added to many soy foods.

Soy foods contain high levels of aluminum which is toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys.

If after reading all the above dangers of soy, you still think it’s OK to feed your infant soy formula, please keep reading.

Lierre Keith states, “What happens to babies fed soy formula? First, soy formula provides 38 mg of isoflavones a day. That’s a hormone load equivalent to that of three to five birth control pills each and every day. That number was derived from Swiss Federal Health Service data, data they published with warnings. Are you warned yet? Daniel Sheehan, who was a Senior Toxicologist at the FDA’s National Center for Toxicological Research, thinks you should be. He says that infant soy formula is a ‘large, uncontrolled and basically unmonitored human infant experiment.'”

Soy infant formula is birth control for babies. Below is a list of the dangers of soy infant formula as summarized by Soy Online Service:

Babies fed soy-based formula have 13,000 to 22,000 times more estrogen compounds in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula.

Infants exclusively fed soy formula receive the estrogenic equivalent of at least five birth control pills per day.

Male infants undergo a “testosterone surge” during the first few months of life, when testosterone levels may be as high as those of an adult male. During this period, baby boys are programmed to express male characteristics after puberty, not only in the development of their sexual organs and other masculine physical traits, but also in setting patterns in the brain characteristic of male behavior.

Pediatricians are noticing greater numbers of boys whose physical maturation is delayed, or does not occur at all, including lack of development of the sexual organs. Learning disabilities, especially in male children, have reached epidemic proportions.

Soy infant feeding—which floods the bloodstream with female hormones that inhibit testosterone—cannot be ignored as a possible cause for these tragic developments. In animals, soy feeding indicates that phytoestrogens in soy are powerful endocrine disrupters.

Almost 15 percent of white girls and 50 percent of African-American girls show signs of puberty such as breast development and pubic hair, before the age of eight. Some girls are showing sexual development before the age of three. Premature development of girls has been linked to the use of soy formula and exposure to environmental estrogens such as PCBs and DDE.

Despite what the soy industry would love to have you believe, soy is no health food, and it is certainly no miracle food. It is a drug and I would stay far away from it.

I recently finished reading The Vegetarian Mythby Lierre Keith. I was absolutely blown away by this book. There were literally moments where what I was reading sent shivers down my spine. Ms. Keith has quite a way with words. Her writing is gripping, to say the least.

Dr. Mike Eades said it best: “Everyone should read this book, vegetarian and non-vegetarian alike. If you’re a radical feminist, you should read this book; if you’re a male chauvinist, you should read this book; if you have children, especially female children, you should read this book; if you are a young woman (or man) you should read this book; if you love animals, you should read this book; if you hate vegetarians, you should read this book; if you are contemplating the vegetarian way of life, you should definitely read this book; if you have a vegetarian friend or family member, you should this book and so should your friend. As MD (Dr. Mary Dan Eades) said after she read it, ‘everyone who eats should read this book.'”

In my humble opinion you should go buy this book right now. It’s one of the most important books you will ever read.

Now that Spring is here (actually it has felt more like summer lately!) I have been reflecting on how I held up over the Fall/Winter of 2009/2010. Being that I am always on the go and average only 5-6 hours of sleep a night, my Fall and Winter usually consists of several colds and at least one that lingers for a couple of weeks. Outside of the fact that I run around like crazy and do not get much sleep, I take exceptional care of myself. I strength train 2-3 times a week, I eat a low carbohydrate/high protein & fat diet, and I supplement myself with whole food vitamins.

As I just mentioned, I eat a low carbohydrate diet. (less than 60 grams of carbohydrates per day). Up until the Fall of 2009 I was still eating some grains, albeit not a great deal of them. As I have mentioned in previous posts, grains contain antinutrients. Simply put, they interfere with our body’s ability to absorb nutrients and they are linked to a myriad of other health problems (this is a must read: Cereal Grains: Humanity’s Double-Edged Sword, by Loren Cordain). However, I still ate them because 1) I ate a minimal amount and 2) I liked eating them.

However, with how consistently I had been getting sick every Fall and Winter year in and year out, I started thinking about this more. What if even the small amount of grains I had been eating was enough to interfere with my body’s ability to absorb nutrients and was therefore the main culprit in my getting so sick? What if this was what was truly compromising my immune system, much more than my lack of sleep (I am NOT disregarding the importance of sleep)?

With all this in mind I made a change in the Fall of 2009. I removed ALL grains from my diet.

As I sit here reflecting on this past Fall and Winter, this is what stands out: I did not get sick even one time. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Not even a sniffle. OK, you get my point.

Some people might say this is nothing more than a coincidence, and I suppose that could be true. But knowing that grains do in fact interfere with our body’s ability to absorb nutrients, and that since I have cut them completely out of my diet I have not gotten sick AND I feel great, it’s hard for me to say that there is not a relationship.

“Even when they’ve stopped popping, they haven’t stopped working. Now every box of Kellogg’s Rice Krispies cereal has antioxidants and nutrients that help support your child’s immune system”. This is how Kellogg’s is now touting their Rice Krispies cereal.

As a father myself, I become so unbelievably angry every time I read this. I hope that for every one else that reads this, parent or not, it elicits the same reaction.

Grains are linked to a myriad of health problems. Grains and sugar cause a highly inflammatory reaction in the human body. Grains contain something called antinutrients. Simply put, they are called antinutrients because they interfere with your body’s ability to absorb nutrients. Kellogg’s would have you believe that feeding our children (or adults for that matter) Rice Krispies will give them a stronger immune system, when in fact it will do quite the opposite.

Let’s look a little closer at eating Rice Krispies as part of a “healthy” breakfast. Looking at that commercial, let’s say for arguments sake that the mother is feeding her child one serving of Rice Krispies with one cup of milk. It is important to keep in mind that ALL carbohydrates that a person consumes get broken down into glucose (i.e., sugar). According to the USDA SR-21, one serving of Rice Krispies contains 28 grams of carbohydrates. One serving of milk contains 13 grams of carbohydrates. So, in that one bowl of Rice Krispies your child (or you) is consuming 41 grams of carbohydrates all ready to be broken down into sugar…almost 3 tablespoons (2.88 to be exact)! That of course, is assuming you only consume 1 bowl of cereal. According to Dr. Mike Eades, “normal blood sugar represents less than one teaspoon of sugar dissolved in the blood“. That is far less than the minimum 3 tablespoons of sugar that was just consumed in that one bowl of Rice Krispies with milk.

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies supports the immune system and is part of a healthy breakfast? I think not.

About

Neil Holland is certified by the National Academy of Sports Medicine as a Personal Trainer. Since 2003, he has been helping people realize their physical fitness potential, so they can enjoy a healthier lifestyle and a higher quality of life.